The Shepard's tones concept has already been employed in a number of
compositions, most notable Jean Claude Risset's "Fall" -- a movement
from a large work about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Shepard's
tones, like any musical construct (I-IV-V7-I, dorian mode, 12-tone music,
to name a few) "tells musicians" that there is a wide variety of constructs
(many not yet discovered) that can be used to provide context and expressiveness
in sound exploration. To think otherwise is akin to disallowing the use of
tritones!
Rebecca Mercuri
mercuri@gradient.cis.upenn.edu